JOHN Steinbeck’s 1937 novella Of Mice and Men was drawn from the writer’s own experiences in California in the Great Depression, and paved the way for what is considered his masterpiece, the Nobel prize winning The Grapes of Wrath. The period has been a fertile ground for literature, drama and music, and, until recently, we…
YOU sometimes hear about pigs in clover, but the three little pigs who have arrived at Bere Marsh Farm near Shillingstone are happy as Larry finding lots of interesting things to explore and even roll in. The new arrivals are Oxford Sandy and Blacks, a trio of females of this rare breed who have taken…
IT is said that King Henry I died from eating a surfeit of lampreys, and while this new and flamboyant Daisy Evans production was never in danger of dying a theatrical death, it did came close to overwhelming Mozart’s wonderful opera, The Magic Flute. Individually there is little to criticise in Loren Elstein and Jake…
THE world of PG Wodehouse extends its delights from generation to generation, but most fans of Jeeves, Bertie Wooster, Blandings Castle, Gussie Fink-Nottle et al don’t know much about the man who created them. Playwright William Humble set about to correct that with his solo show, Wodehouse in Wonderland, performed by Robert Daws and playing…
THERE is a dramatic tragedy lurking in the story of a group of about-to-be-made-redundant Rhondda Valley miners reforming their Male Voice Choir, as the once-dominant coal industry begins shrink into insignificance during the 1950s. At its height there were 53 coal mines in the Rhondda. By 1990, only one was left in production. Composer David…
IN amongst his more than 50 novels and dozens of short stories, HG Wells wrote several science fiction works, many at the end of the 19th century, which, with uncanny accuracy, predicted aircraft, tanks, space travel, nuclear weapons, satellite television, a form of the world wide web and biological engineering. The Time Machine was Wells’…
RUFUS Norris, director of the National Theatre, has always been keen that his company on London’s South Bank should live up to its name and be a truly NATIONAL theatre, for everyone. Five years ago, Public Acts was set up to pursue this purpose, and the locked-down days of the COVID pandemic gave Norris and…
THE phrase “jumping in the deep end’ comes to mind when looking at Margaret Hobbs, the author of the script for this stage adaption of Barry Reed’s 1980 novel The Verdict. It is said that we all have at least one book or play within us, and, fully believing this, Margaret Hobbs tried hard for…
TO mark the tenth anniversary of Martin Emslie’s oratorio Omega and Alpha, the Wells Cathedral premiere was revived at Yeovil’s Westlands with several members of the original Castle Cary Choir and two of the soloists, mezzo Marta Fontanals-Simmons and high tenor Jonathan Ansell, who rose to fame as a member of classical boy group G4….
WITH the news full of details of a 21-year-old American serviceman who decided to leak confidential documents including vital information about the conflict in Ukraine, there could hardly be a better time to see Katherine Moar’s debut play, Farm Hall, at Bath Theatre Royal. It is based on the true story of ten German scientists…